Whatever It Takes 2012

be loving 2006
live it up 2007
don’t give up, embrace (one family) 2008
just do it 2009
new places new faces 2010
make it happen 2011
whatever it takes 2012

I don’t keep a journal, but I keep a calendar. Beyond the usual scheduling of dinners with friends, doctors’ appointments, weekend trips and weddings, I kept track of significant dates too: the Japan earthquake, the day I finished a book, the sad day of a friend passing, a first kiss.

When I look back at my year and the memories from my calendar, I laugh and become nostalgic because I think it has been a really good year. I love to see the days and miles that I ran preparing for my half marathon, the weeks spent in Paris and New York, the dates with a boy, the long weekends spent with best friends and the most impulsive day that I went to Disneyland on a Wednesday night after work and came back on Friday to work. Many things were planned while a lot was unexpected, but with all that has happened this year, I did #makeithappen.

In 2012, I anticipate a greater learning curve. While I fear comfort and complacency, I will still be at the same job and the same residence this year. Graduating from college three years ago, I wondered what it would be like to settle in a town, call it home and truly believe that it was home. I had been living year-by-year, enjoying the transient traveled life and believed I would continue this life for many years. But I feel that age fading and maybe that comes with growing up. Sometimes I yearn for the freedoms of a nomadic life again, but there is confidence, happiness and peace in finding a home.

As much as I loved 2011 and am excited about 2012, Whatever It Takes will keep me grounded. It is not my typical merry motto, but a more realistic approach of fighting against a pacified life, the hurdles that may be faced when feeling complacent or being overanalytical and dissatisfied with a situation. It is about endurance, making it work and doing whatever it takes to make something better, to make something positive. Work may get dull and living with your eighty-something roommates may not always be easy, but I can be thankful that I have a great job and enjoy the people I work with and I can be grateful that I get to know and love my grandparents that much more. Whatever It Takes is that one extra push that we may need to get through another exam, another pay check, another day.

For your motto or mine, let it be yours and let it be your year.

Happy New Year 2012.

Unexpected Reality

This summer, my college girlfriends and I went to Cambria, CA for an all-girls weekend. We are seven girls that have known each other for seven years and have grown to love and care for one another. Between us, we live in three states and we realized that we will see each other less, but will have more of these gatherings to look forward to. We imagine ourselves several years from now, married and bringing our future husbands with us to these annual reunions.

One of girls called me last week and told me that she just met one of her close guy-friends’ girlfriend and she didn’t connect with the girlfriend as much as she wanted or expected. This is an easy assumption: if you love one of your close friends, you want to love the person that they are dating. Granted that this was only one encounter and under the circumstances, it was not ideal, but my friend and I came to a realization. As much as we hope and imagine that we will love our friends’ boyfriends and girlfriends, more than half the time we are not going to like who are friends are dating.  Friend groups are filled with different personalities and it takes time to love your friends for who they are. So it would make sense that with each one of us having different personalities and preferences, our boyfriends/husbands/girlfriends/wives will also have different personalities and perhaps ones that we are not too fond of.

I think for most, it is important to find someone that gets a long with family and friends, but it is hard to please everyone. We are not in college anymore and the farther we live a part and lead separate lives, the more likely we won’t know the people who are friends are dating or marrying. And I don’t think we realize that we may not like our friends choices and it will be hard to do anything about it. As much as we have learned to love each other as friends, we will have to learn to love each other’s significant others. We hope that we aren’t a different person to our significant other and a different person with our friends, but to some extent we will be because that significant other gets to know you differently and in different circumstances. I just hope you’re not in a Jekyll/Hyde situation either. And as long as the significant other is not a harm to the friend, we have to do our best to accept and love them. It’s not always a fun thing to do, but really, what can we do?

Another one of our girls (and our only one) married a boy in our friend group and we are very lucky to like him and know him well. In part, they have set an expectation of how husband/friends relationships should be. But most likely those relationships won’t be as easy and great, and I don’t think my girls have necessarily considered this yet. We’re more excited about our boyfriends/husbands getting along like we do and yet, we may find outselves in a more different (and slightly awkward) situation.

The Itch

I’m feeling the itch. I don’t think I typically get it, but once in a while it happens. I never act on it; it just becomes a nebulous of thoughts and whatifs.

It obviously becomes a topic of girlfriend conversation, but I always say that we may often think about it, but it’s something that we never really yearn for. Ask me again in ten years and then I’m sure I’ll be yearning.

I’ve read a couple of relationship books, which some family members think that it is because I’ve got the itch, but I don’t. They give me funny flack once in a while, but I just keep telling them it was research, and it was. In case you are interested: Become Your Own Matchmaker: 8 Easy Steps for Attracting Your Perfect Mate by Patti Stanger and Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb. I am totally recommending Lori Gottlieb’s book, especially if you’re under 35 (I loved it so much that I bought it and have passed it along to several friends).  It’s a more intellectual and study-based and just gives a real good reminder of what our expectations are and what they actually should be for a really great companionship.  Learn from her mistakes.

My parents have mentioned a couple of guys, always leading the conversation with so and so is such a “nice young man.”  Total giveaway.  Thanks Mom and Dad. (#trueconfession It may have gently passed my mind, but let’s not push it)

Strangers, Again

WongFu Productions is known for their Asian relationship video shorts.  They have quite the following and are pretty popular.  I have never spent time watching or following their work, but I spent a good afternoon at work scanning through some of their videos.  They have some really good stuff up.  Maybe we should collaborate.

Patti Stanger

I’m not one for relationship books. They’re supposed to be for people in their mid-thirties still searching for the one. There’s nothing wrong with still being in my mid-twenties wanting to find someone on my own. I should have good years left before I consult the books, right? — Whelp, I dropped my pride and went all in. What could be so bad on reading a self-help book about love? Any information would be good information (and good research for this blog).

Ms. Patti Stanger

A coworker still looking for love swears by this book, even believes she would still be with her last boyfriend if she had taken the advice from Patti Stanger prior to her breakup.  In the book from the television reality star of Million Dollar Matchmaker, Become Your Own Matchmaker: 8 Easy Steps for Attracting Your Perfect Mate, Patti Stanger offers good and straight-to-the-point advice about finding a mate. If you have ever seen her television show at least once, you get the jist of who she is and she is exactly that in her book.  And I love it.  The confirmation we seek from our best girl friends may help our confidence, but sometimes we need an outsider to give us a reality check and that extra little kick.  Stanger instills a different kind of confidence to her readers and if you follow her eight steps, you should be able to find yourself ” in a committed, monogamous relationship with Mr. Right in less than a year.”  Yay or nay depending on your needs, but let’s just say that I’m not that eager.  But still, Stanger has a lot of great words that focus on more than just finding the right man, but also creating a confident and strong women before she gives herself to someone else.

And that’s my favorite part of the book.  Women often find themselves scared and unsure about dating in general, let alone finding a husband, and this book gives women the self-assurance that they have the goods to be a great person and a great partner.  Stanger’s words may be things we have heard time and time again, ensuring our happiness and health comes first, but they’re good reminders and good positive reinforcers since men see those qualities reflected in dateable and marriageable women.  During this preparation period as we hope to meet that perfect guy, Stanger encourages that while we can have anyone we want, we also need to be realistic and not so picky with the our list of “non-negotiables.” Too many women have passed up too many good men just because the guy had crooked teeth or scratched his head too much when their best qualities of being a good provider and a promising father may be overlooked.  The little things shouldn’t be deal-breakers.  And once we’re good and ready, Stanger sends us out into the field where viable men gather, teaches us how to “qualify the buyer” to make sure he has the qualities to be a keeper, and keeping him till the ring is on that finger.  She provides encouragement and warning signs of when a relationship is moving too fast or too slow, when a man is committed and when he’s not.

Stanger’s words can be really great, but for me, I have to take them with a grain of salt.  It can be a little intimidating and somewhat desperate to think that it is that easy to find a husband in 278 pages.  Maybe that’s a younger age mentality, but it was a good read and good insight for real world dating.  From beginning to end, Patti Stanger tells it like-it-is and whatever age one may be, this book can give you what you need to get yourself out there and be a confident woman.  It can be scary and it can be fun, but we only have to give a little to get a lot.